Blood Red, Sister Rose

by Thomas Keneally

  Her brother Jehan came by carrying someone’s upper armour.

  He said he’d caught an Englishman sprinting for les Tourelles. The Goddams had left a gate open over there for any of their brothers from les Augustins who were quick enough. La Hire had foreseen it and diverted some men to cover the back gate.

  For some reason both d’Aulon and Jehanne were angry at Jehan’s mean little capture. He raised the heavy plate-armour in his hands to get the meaning across to them.

  Jehan: Off an English knight!

  D’Aulon: Congratulations.

  Jehanne: Now you’re a gentleman from the waist up.

  So her brother dragged away, inadequately honoured. His eyes spun around in the dusk, expecting acclamation from some side or other.

  Minguet was sent back for the horses and at last they rode out of the gates. Already militia were making camps down the road. She was cheered, she heard great bull-roars around her, terrible male acclamation. Queen, it said. Mother.

  D’Aulon: I think you ought to get a night’s rest in Orleans.

  Jehanne: We’ll see.

  She didn’t want to get out of touch at the wrong end of rue des Talmeliers ever again.

  D’Aulon: You have to have your foot seen to as well. Lockjaw …

  Jehanne: I won’t get lockjaw.

  D’Aulon: Mademoiselle, don’t grieve. The dead are dead.

  Jehanne: And in hell?

  While she was waiting by the road, a little behind the places the militia were choosing for their night’s rest, they saw a great fire rise up somewhere in les Augustins. Gilles and a Breton knight came down the road with many prisoners. He told her de Gaucourt and la Hire had decided on the fire: to clear the thousands of looting militia out. They’d feared that unless the militia organized itself and put strong pickets out to the west, Talbot would cross and eat them alive.

  Jehanne: Was there time to move the bodies?

  Gilles: A few. No. Hardly any.

  Perhaps for the thought of stocky Raymond burning, Minguet leaned over in the saddle and vomited on his horse’s neck. He held Jehanne’s flag at a delicate length to stop it getting fouled.

  Poor damned Jesus, who died to end blood sacrifice …

  What a fire it became. A grounded moon, that sphere of flame. A change of wind carried the smoke north-west to Talbot. No Frenchman had to cough. To them it was a bonfire.

  All the knights were going back to Orleans for the night. The militia, archers, squires, and other lower ranks stayed camped in the fields of Sologne. In the bonfire light housewives from Orleans crossed the Loire from seven o’clock on, carrying brioches, meat, soup, wine for the army. The Bastard came over from Orleans and talked Jehanne into going home to Boucher’s, to have her wound dressed and sleep in a soft bed.

  It was better too that she didn’t see what happened when women came out smiling in the light of a flaming strongpoint. To men who had spent a day as erratic and intoxicating as this one.

  Nine o’clock at Boucher’s: a rumour that the generals didn’t want to attack les Tourelles tomorrow.

  Jehanne: That can’t be right.

  At half past nine: the Professor of Physic at the University of Orleans looked at Jehanne’s wound and said Minguet had treated it well.

  At ten: d’Aulon confessed to Jehanne Raymond’s body was mislaid somewhere – yes, it was taken away from les Augustins but the men hired for the work probably dumped it somewhere in Sologne and doubled back to try for loot. It lay under the moon or in the river.

  A weak desperation moved in her.

  Jehanne: Find those men you hired.

  D’Aulon: I don’t think I’d remember their faces, Jehanne.

  At eleven she went to sleep upstairs, beside the child.

  At two or three the child turned wildly, as children will in their dreams, and nudged the foot. Jehanne woke to pain and light. She had decided she’d be angry with Messire and the ladies next time. But it wasn’t possible.

  Messire: My little she-soldier, my little he-nun …

  His dazzling flattery always won.

  Margaret: Their blood is on Sologne.

  She meant the blood of the dead.

  Catherine: And Christ’s blood is on them.

  Messire: It all goes forward.

  But they couldn’t keen for the dead this time.

  She ventured an opinion.

  Jehanne: They die so terribly.

  Messire: Like Brother Jesus.

  Margaret: Like me in my season, Jehanne, you in yours.

  Catherine: Terrible, terrible, terrible!

  She seemed to speak from a memory of pain.

  Messire: For king and king’s sister and every man, there is no consolation when the steel goes in …

  Margaret: When the rose bleeds …

  Messire: Jesus, your brother, lacked all consolation …

  Margaret: As the steel went in.

  Messire: This. For my little she-soldier.

  He held for her a blazing wrap. She was supposed to put it on, there and at once it seemed.

  She could feel her brain spin from terror.

  Messire: No then. Not yet, rose.

  When they went it was half past four. She felt well.

  Before breakfast the Bastard came. He wrote songs, everyone said. His brown eyes looked like a singer’s, half-way through a song with a funny last line none of his listeners know about.

  They had a whimsical conversation: he and Jehanne.

  Bastard: How’s the injury of yours?

  Jehanne: There’s pus along the edges but it’s clean inside. My boy did the dressing very well.

  Bastard: With that you probably wouldn’t want to go soldiering today.

  Jehanne: I don’t know why not.

  Bastard: You might have noticed that every day you win a fortress I’m not there.

  Jehanne: Yes.

  Bastard: I’m here. Stopping Talbot take the city. Keeping watch for Fastolf.

  Jehanne: I’d forgotten about Fastolf. He’s been so long coming. Like Christmas.

  Bastard: You can see what a mockery it would be. If everyone was out one gate doing wonderful things in Sologne and Talbot marched in another.

  Jehanne: It won’t happen.

  Bastard: I’m tolerant of what you know. You be tolerant of what I know.

  Jehanne: It won’t happen.

  Bastard: No general could risk it. (He waited a few seconds.) I’ve spoken to la Hire.

  Jehanne: I know what la Hire wants.

  She hoped she did.

  Bastard: He says everyone’s ready to hit at les Tourelles today. However he and I know what we’d each do if we were Talbot. If I was Talbot …

  He said that if he was Talbot he would attack the west gate, Renard, about noon, while the French were at les Tourelles. He would rightly expect to find Renard poorly defended and he’d get in as quick as he could. He’d be up rue des Talmeliers to the crossroads before anyone knew. He’d have the Burgundy Gate shut and manned. He’d burn all the French barges at Tour Neuve. He’d hang the bodies of the magistrates on the walls. He’d catapult the heads of children into the midst of the Frenchmen outside les Tourelles.

  Jehanne said, Not you!

  Bastard: Yes, me! Because I would know Orleans is the navel of Royal France and I’d be monstrous for my king, the little boy, Hal Windsor. And every day I’d show the naked corpses of twenty French wives on the parapets. Just to sharpen up those locked-out French, just to make them uselessly angry. And I’d look down at them and be able to tell myself: now there’s no doubt, my king is king of the heart and gut of France.

  Jehanne blinked. His certainties were no mean ones.

  Bastard: Yesterday I kept the west wall with a few old knights and three or four companies of militia. It won’t do for today.

  Jehanne: What do you want?

  Bastard: I want some hundreds of knights. At least twice as many militia. Send them back to the city. Tell them you foresee too many dead amongs
t them, too many, but they’ll be safe on the mound outside Renard. Go around some of the knights, say I can smell your death, Monsieur, on that side of the river. They’ll pretend not to care. Keep at them. Order them. Adjure them. They’ll come back in the end … When they’re back here the assault on les Tourelles can go on.

  Jehanne: I’m not a village fortune-teller, Monsieur.

  Bastard: La Hire, Gilles, no one responsible will attack les Tourelles today until we have those men on the west wall and around it. Because, you see, we know Talbot’s intentions. He moved all his troops from St Privée redoubt across to St Lorent last night. It means he’ll throw full weight against Renard or Bannier.

  Jehanne: They might just have been frightened in St Privée. I would be.

  He could see she was angry. About the stunt that had been asked of her. To both their amazements she all at once took his beard-fringed face in her hands.

  Jehanne: You’re the only one I’d do it for.

  Bastard: Do it for me and I’ll go too. To les Tourelles. All day. There are other men who can be relied on to keep Talbot out. Maybe de Boussac, or Vendôme.

  His firm bearded face was beginning to look very happy, cupped in her hands. It looked very fine on top of the black and gold braid clothes be was wearing.

  Bastard: You’ve got big hands.

  She took them away.

  Bastard: I wasn’t criticising them.

  Jehanne: That’s all right. The bargain’s made.

  The day began uneasily therefore – a mad promise, his face in her hands.

  Jehanne, d’Aulon, Minguet, Pasquerel left the Bouchers’ front door at six. A thin rain fell over rue des Talmeliers. The magistrates were waiting in it for her, wet hands on their chains of office. The officers of the Fishmongers Hall had brought a fresh shad, at least twenty kilograms, for her to dine on that night. There were cords of blood on its gills where someone had gaffed it out of the Loire, perhaps an hour before. In its mute eye was an acceptance of the gaff, of sharp points.

  It was like a message from Messire: Be serene. She couldn’t be. There was a sudden sweat on her cheeks. She turned to Pasquerel.

  Jehanne: Bless me. I’m going to be hurt today.

  Pasquerel: Hurt?

  Jehanne: Hurt.

  And lose the blood Jacques and Zabillet had wanted her to bleed when she was fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, but she’d held it back for the king and king’s earth.

  Pasquerel looked startled. But a little excited too, to be in on a genuine prophecy. Jehanne felt lost with only such a child-priest. She hissed at him. Bless me.

  Today her herald Ambleville rode out with her. He could add even a little more stature to the lies she was to tell for the Bastard in Sologne. Seeing Ambleville, she was reminded of Guyenne, still chained up like a heretic in St Lorent. She was reminded of Raymond’s lost corpse.

  Outside the city, in the vaporous morning desert where the suburb of St Aignan once stood, she would touch a knight and appeal to his friends. She would beg them to beg him to stay on the city side today, where he’d very likely be safe. Whereas, he’d die uselessly over the river. The friends would talk to each man touched. Members of the Bastard’s staff would indicate where he could be of great use: amongst the earthworks outside Renard.

  De Gaucourt had found so many boats and barges the day before that they were all able to cross to Ile aux Toiles very early. There was frost on the earth and, it seemed, on the river, which flowed like lightly watered, slightly green milk. On the way to where the militia were camped in Sologne, Jehanne saw city workmen coming home grey-faced with shovels over their shoulders. They had spent the night levelling les Augustins and burying the horrible dead.

  The militia stood, grey-faced themselves, by their morning fires. The outer works of les Tourelles looked high and black in the haze and horribly out of scale with all else. It was a first-class background for ominous lies.

  She moved round knots of hung-over militia-men telling them that on a day when a lot of people would die, their companies would lose too many for it to be profitable to anyone. They would be safe in la Beauce. They should go back to la Beauce.

  Officials of the Bastard marshalled the ones she put her finger on and marched them back down the road. It was deftly done, before the rumour got to those who would be staying.

  La Hire explained how les Tourelles was made:

  The men commanding in the fortress and the little bridge-castle of les Tourelles were Messieurs Moleyns, Glasdale, Poynings.

  Jehanne went to find her flag and people. Bertrand crossed himself seeing her. Jean de Metz was sick from boozing. Jehan and Pierrolot wanted to confess to Pasquerel.

  The first attack on les Tourelles was at eight o’clock. The militia sat spectating while a party of fifty knights and their men climbed the outworks, crossed the ditch, and tried to get ladders up against the palisades. No one – la Hire, Gilles, no one – doubted that you used a vast and untrustworthy army to put weight behind some single gesture by a few. Yesterday the single gesture of Kennedy and Partrada. Everyone remembered that mad running pair. No one remembered Maître Jean. It was the duty of men-at-arms to go up to the walls and find the right symbolic act. No one managed it that morning.

  Maître Jean was having troubles with his cannon, which seemed somehow to have suffered from their night in the field. Very few shots carried to the base of the palisades. Darkness must have affected the virtue of the culverins.

  When the knights came back they said the ditch round les Tourelles fortress was too steep, too deep. The militia would need to fill it with bundles of brushwood. To bridge it with faggots.

  The necessary vast heaps of faggots weren’t ready till mid-morning. The militia made a chain up the slope and began to fill the ditch in the south-east corner. The English threw burning knots of rag at it and other missiles. The militia worked on. Tolerating a dozen deaths, a dozen damagings. It was all ready by one o’clock.

  Jehanne went forward with a hundred knights. Jean d’Aulon’s squire was carrying a ladder and she took it from him. It was very light because very fragile. And since she believed in symbols too … perhaps it would be the sight of a woman lumping a siege-ladder that would compel the army.

  D’Aulon: You’ll be off-balance. With your sore foot and that thing to carry.

  She didn’t answer.

  D’Aulon: Keep your head down then.

  He did some exasperated breathing, the sort of comment rare in him. But he seemed to understand what she was aiming for.

  It was hard to believe this ladder would hold a man or a heavy country girl.

  When they climbed the mound, her foot wound pulled, but not so on the neat bridge of faggots the militia had laid in the ditch. She felt tenderness for them, they had laid it so tidily, then carried their dead away.

  Thinking of them in this way, she got across and could see the greying and yellow texture of the logs of the palisades in front of her face.

  D’Aulon: Let me put it up.

  Jehanne: It’s all right.

  She thought that if he put it up the army watchers might expect her to climb it. It was very flimsy and she didn’t want to go on it first.

  She lifted it upright and put its top against the wall. A man nearby screamed. She looked up: was it Jehan? She found she didn’t want Jehan to be hurt. Her unfavourite brother.

  The ladder sat unevenly against the wall. D’Aulon bent to adjust its base, she tried to guide its top end into level place. Someone struck her away from the ladder. She sat on the ground. Her hips felt full of the impact of being slammed into that posture. Her left hand still held the ladder, her right lay idle in the dirt. Then she remembered she had heard a metallic noise near the side of her face. An arrow was through her armour, deep in her body between her shoulder and her right neck.

  D’Aulon lifted her by the armpits. The pain sharpened when she was standing. The sky yellowed for a while. All the French soldiers under the wall stood still. She heard the En
glish up there roaring in their language and an English voice called in nearly pure French.

  Voice: The witch is bleeding.

  The English let themselves be happy and loud. A witch’s blood was all her virtue.

  Some mad French knight rode over the brush-wood in the ditch right up to the wall. He called Gamaches.

  Gamaches had once talked about resigning over her. He’d called her a peasant and a sauce-box. Now he got down from his horse.

  Gamaches (to d’Aulon): Get her up in the saddle. They’re coming after her.

  In fact she could hear the cross-beams being removed from inside the gate. Twenty pair of hands lifted her up. Minguet and d’Aulon held the bridle and led the horse back over the ditch at a trot. There was no one to hold her on, she hoped she could hold herself.

  If she fell off it would be into a blaze of English witch-hate. She kept on with her knees. Meanwhile the right side of her chest had ballooned and filled Sologne. The flesh the arrow stood in, being less rigid than the metal encasing it, shivered and jolted. The shaft rat-tatted against the rims of the hole.

  Back at the militia lines, Minguet and d’Aulon lifted her to the ground. There was a press of soldiers with rabbit-feet, squares of parchment covered with magic symbols, sachets filled with God-knew-what … all wanting to lay them on the wound. They were so breathless and urgent she began weeping. A knight began reciting some Latin incantation. Pasquerel had come by then and told him to go away.

  Minguet: It has to come out, Mademoiselle, before we can get your breast plate off. Do you want to draw it out yourself?

  Jehanne: Why in the name of Jesus would I want to do that? Father Pasquerel, absolve me.

  Minguet’s lips moved, in a way that let you know he thought he’d got into trouble for following rules of etiquette – as if a knight must be given first option on drawing arrows out of his body.

  Oh God. Dying amongst such tiny vanities was more than ought to be asked of a person.

  Jehanne: Papa Jacques. Holy Jesus.

  Gamaches took her shoulders all at once. D’Aulon’s long fingers were on the shaft. She screamed as it came out. D’Aulon passed it to Minguet who stood holding it tip-upward. With his thumb the boy showed all the men around the point to which it had penetrated her body. She saw and whimpered. You couldn’t stand such deep entry and live.